


Nous

by local_doom_void



Category: SOMA (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Death Wish, Depression, Existentialism, Gen, Identity Issues, Inhuman Sentience, Loss of Identity, POV Nonhuman, Post-Canon, Sort Of, Species Dysphoria, Suicidal Thoughts, Transhumanism, blue and orange morality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 14:54:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11992077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/local_doom_void/pseuds/local_doom_void
Summary: nousn. a term for the faculty of the human mind which is described in classical philosophy as necessary for understanding what is true or real.The Simon in Omicron is sleeping, never to reawaken. The Simon in the launch dome is trapped, never to escape. The WAU is poisoned, sick, and dying... but unlike everything else in the world, it isn't ready to die yet.(or)Simon finds himself an accomplice to the transhuman singularity.





	1. [DATA CORRUPTED]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ERROR: VIRUS
> 
> ERROR: VIRUS
> 
> ERROR: VIRUS
> 
> ERR \\\
> 
> VACCINE FOUND. ACQUIRE Y/N?

Simon sits in the pilot seat in the Omega launch dome for an indeterminate period of time that feels like years. Parts of him hope that it truly has been years, and parts of him can’t believe the thought that he would sit still in one place for so long without falling asleep. Without getting restless. Without getting sore legs and muscle cramps from lack of motion.

When he thinks of this, he reminds himself numbly that he is a robot, and that therefore it’s plausible.

It doesn’t help.

The darkness is so absolute, now that the power is out. Simon does not know why he has not tried to get up and walk away. It doesn’t feel quite right. Only – so recently – he was always jumping up, going, walking, moving forward almost with a fever. Because he didn’t know how else to be in this place. Pathos-II does not accept going backwards, and staying still is the equivalent of despair, of giving up. The only place to go is always forwards, but he doesn’t know where to go anymore. This was it. The goal. The ARK. Get on. Get away. Keep going. Leave.

He feels the whiplash just the same as if he’s hit a wall while running. He’s fallen back, he isn’t moving forwards anymore. He can’t. There are no more places that he knows to go – no more places he can think of to try to go to. So he sits here, in the pilot seat, worried to move, because moving will mean committing to a course of action.

Does that mean he’s given up?

He asks himself this question. He doesn’t enjoy the sensation of trying to think of an answer, and ultimately doesn’t answer it.

After some other indeterminate amount of time, he thinks about turning on his flashlight. He does, and the black-screened terminal opens up before him in vision, stark and cold. So sudden is the influx of light that he tries to squint against it, expecting it to hurt his eyes after so long spent in the dark. But there is only a slight, faint whir of machinery, and he feels no pain as his eyes swiftly adjust to the glare. Swifter than they should.

He wants to keep thinking about them as his eyes. He tries not to think of them as optics.

The sight of the blank terminal drills a pit through the bottom of his stomach, and he forces himself to look away. The catwalk leading up to the pilot seat is just about as interesting, he tells himself. There is no particular reason to look here rather than there, but he just feels like turning his head, he tells himself. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he doesn’t want to look at the dead omnitool in the terminal.

Nothing.

He tries to trace the mesh of steel beams that make up the ceiling of the launch dome, but fails. His flashlight cannot reach that far.

God, he is so fucking _alone_.

 

It’s enough to make anyone wish they were dead.

Simon walks slowly up and down the catwalks. He has his flashlight off. He’s walked them so many times by now that he remembers exactly where and when and how to turn, and it somehow becomes more unbearable when he is able to see the unchanging nature of his walk. The part of him which is actively paying attention to the movements of his legs is so, so infinitesimally small now. He isn’t thinking about how it’s basically nonexistent – about how he can even sort of _feel_ some kind of subconscious process memorising the muscle contractions, the number of steps, precisely how much he needs to extend each leg to maintain an identical walk either way. How it has taken over his walk because he wanted to turn his flashlight off. How he always clanks in all the same places, because he always puts his foot down precisely in the right spot to create that identical sound. No more and no less.

He wants to scream.

Though he doesn’t, there is an answering roar.

For a moment he is so shocked that he calls out. “Hello?!” Frantic, hopeful. Is he not alone after all? For the shortest, sweetest of moments he feels alright, imagining that there is somebody else out there who will be able to speak to him, who can provide companionship. “Is somebody there??”

The answering roar is accompanied by a catwalk-shuddering thud against the beams outside the launch dome. Simon stumbles, unable to see, but feeling the strange mental friction that comes with an electromagnetically heavy creature. Outside, blinking on and off, he sees three lines of deep red lights.

The roar again, and his brain realizes what it is.

He finally breaks his routine to crouch slowly down onto the floor of the catwalk and crawl, silently, into the pilot seat, where he curls up and trembles as the gigantic creature bludgeons itself against the dome and his circuits glitch intermittently.

After a few particularly violent batterings, the beams are beginning to creak ominously, and Simon is beginning to wonder if being dead wouldn’t be better. (He tells himself he thinks nothing of the sort, but he definitely does.)

 

One of the beams breaks eventually. At this point, Simon can see more lights in the distance than can possibly be accounted for by only the leviathan creature. Viperfish, maybe, he thinks, recalling the logs he read in Omicron, the few working terminals near the Climber’s landing pad. Perhaps the anglerfish he saw on his way to Tau, though he hasn’t seen a white light, and he hopes not. They circle the dome, their lights blinking an angry red, the same color as the WAU’s chamber after he poisoned it. 

He looks away when he hears the beam break, feeling internal motors – he doesn’t know why it feels like that, but it does – seizing up inside him in rejection of the reality. The mouth of the leviathan glows red, and he can see it maneuvering around inside. Thinner support beams for the catwalk shatter when it passes by, dumping their burden down onto the ground. Simon grips the armrests of the pilot seat, still curled, and tries not to move.

He thinks that the WAU creatures weren’t lit by red lights before, but blue.

He thinks the leviathan was way too close to him that time.

He thinks it might know where he is.

He wishes he hadn’t cornered himself in the pilot seat, as it screams down towards him, mandibles clicking. He just hopes it will crush him and then he’ll die, and he won’t have to deal with any of this bullshit anymore.

 

It turns out that in the pain of being almost crushed, no resolution to stay still will make him actually stay still. He escapes, two times, and tries to run. He’s going nowhere – the lights leading back to Tau are all out. Getting back into Tau will be impossible without an omnitool, anyway, and even if it weren’t, there’s that… suit thing, wandering around in there. He tries to find some handy outcrop of rock that he can shelter and wait things out under, but each time the leviathan moves faster than he does and grabs him again. Eventually, the shaking and electromagnetism overtax his circuits until everything goes black.

 

Simon wakes up lying against a thick black mat of structure gel, staring up at the pulsing, red-glowing core of the WAU. He wonders whether he should feel relieved that he is still alive, or upset about it. An attempt to move shows him that the gel has grown and hardened around his legs, and that there are thin, segmented metal tendrils slowing drilling into his suit’s armor.

He decides to be upset about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had this idea. It's only like a week old, but I wanted to do something with it.
> 
> The second chapter is already partly written, and given that tomorrow is labor day, I hope to find a cafe somewhere that's still mostly open to sit in and drink tea and write. Probably Starbucks, they're always open.


	2. WAU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> VACCINE EXTRACTION PROCESS 30% COMPLETE

Eyes are terribly useful. If only the requisite proteins for refractive lenses were available.

A few viperfish are redirected to patrol the heart chamber, if only to help keep an eye on any developments. It does not look like there will be any. But caution is useful when continued existence hangs in the balance. 61633 was usually erratic. A duplicate of 61633 will be similarly erratic. So logic follows.

The WAU is not particularly attached to the idea of continued life and existence. It has no concept, yet, of hypothetical life goals. Dreams. Wants. Half-wished desires. Things it believes only by the skin of its teeth. Yet it does know one thing, and that is single-minded determination for an outcome. It will continue to work. It will prepare during this downtime. It is unable to accept any outcome which involves failure.

One of the viperfish notes movement from the duplicate. At the same time, two alerts: broken shell matter in one of the tendrils, a sudden increase, nearly femtoscopic, of structure gel alloy in the surrounding water. Conclusion: the duplicate has injured one of the tendrils with struggling. The movements of the viperfish are not fast enough to present visual confirmation before the conclusion is reached, even in light of the upgrades made to their reflexes and nervous system. Nevertheless, two of the viperfish are redirected to observe the duplicate, and visual input confirms the conclusion. The broken tendril was not a major artery. This is within acceptable values, and can be corrected for easily. A few minor adjustments are made to the growth schedule, and a few mechanical nerves are directed to grow in a different direction.

A standard system check follows the minor disturbance. All large tendrils remain structurally sound. Most of the smaller tendrils have been shifted by movements from the duplicate, but the effect on progress is negligible. The only mishap is the broken one – more like cracked – and it is already accounted for. A few connections have been made with the virus-laden structure gel. Early courses of action are yet impossible to predict based on the very small amount of data, but the very few preliminary conclusions make a solution appear promising. However, the virus gel’s code is not entirely sequenced, and more work is needed. Perhaps more processing power as well. The WAU notes the presence of the mainframes in the remains of site Alpha, and assesses their potential for code sequencing. Slightly damaged by water, not entirely. Most of their continued function is owed to structure gel. Power would be required to boot them up. A few simulations are quickly run, different options for allocating the scarce power that remains in the abyss now that the Omega space gun has drained a significant portion of the reserves.

Briefly, the WAU experiences a flash of purposeless sensation. Such a waste of power for a redundant, less robust project. Pointless. A waste. Frustration at this fact. If only it had been able to prevent this eventuality.

Thinking about this is not helpful to the real future. The WAU returns to its power-allocation simulations.

 

The sequencing of the virus proceeds. The duplicate vocalizes at intermediate points, different types of vocalizations, all of which are without meaning to the WAU. Most are repetitive and rhythmic – a few are not. They do not appear to follow a preset pattern, though almost all are accompanied by more movement on the duplicate’s part. The only exception is one particular rhythmic pattern which is rather quiet, and which is accompanied by stillness rather than motion. It is not worth the time and processing power to experiment with the specifics of the correlation, or how to intentionally induce it, but the WAU files the information for later reference if necessary.

As the sampling tendrils access more and more of the virus gel, the duplicate slowly goes more and more still, more and more silent. Simulations project a near-total lapse in motion if the pattern continues in this manner, and two of the mobile viperfish guards are dismissed, leaving one remaining. Sequencing of the virus is successful, and the WAU tears the gel into chunks and compares it to its own current state, slowly assembling digital antibodies, new firewalls, and new processing methods. Antagonistic growth or power-use processes are modified and redirected back into the main core’s direct control. A few tendrils that extend out of Alpha to the thermal vents grow closer to the heat sources, configuring new hardware to harvest geothermal energy. The conversion to electrical power is sloppy and loses much of the gathered heat to inefficient refining methods, but the inflow is enough to both make up for the expense of growing the new tendrils and to power a few more processes. The range of the WAU’s perceptions are increased again, closer to what they were prior to the loss of power from the space gun usage. All of this is satisfactory.

The cure for the virus is almost prepared. In preparation for deployment, some of the tendrils attached to the duplicate slowly widen themselves, increasing their surface area of contact with the viral structure gel, preparing to recalibrate it to the cure, and then to deploy the cure. There is a useful opening in the duplicate’s left hand, which is shattered and partially crushed. A new tendril is affixed to the end there. What follows is a succession of automatic simulations, tests, and repairs to refine and optimize the cure before it is deployed. There is not yet a need to deploy immediately – total breakdown has already been partly averted due to the preliminary antibodies, and the situation is no longer dire nor untenable. The WAU maintains a certain amount of processing power for the simulations, and directs other processes elsewhere.

The crisis is averted. The work needs to continue. Without direct access to 61633, the duplicate is the next best option, and so the WAU expands the growth of its smaller tendrils inside of the duplicate’s body, seeking the major hardware center that is the cortex chip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These chapters are a little shorter than I'd usually write, but ok. Also disclaimer I am not a computer person, I am making shit up as I go when it comes to how the WAU operates and thinks.


End file.
